Activity patterns by two colour morphs of the vulnerable guiña, Leopardus guigna (Molina 1782), in temperate forests of southern Chile

Abstract

© 2015, Universidad de Concepcion. All rights reserved. Here we provide the first analysis of activity patterns exhibited by spotted and melanistic colour morphs of the vulnerable guiña Leopardus guigna, in a forest landscape of southern Chile. Camera traps showed guiñas were mainly active at night (64% of photos). Melanistic guiñas were more nocturnal (82% of photos) than the more common spotted cats (57%). Spotted guiñas were more active on cloudy and moonless nights. Our study provides novel findings about the behavioural plasticity of guiña in different ambient conditions, and the relative advantage to each colour morph to persist in an increasingly human-dominated landscape.